Television (TV) broadcasts are currently designed to deliver a consistent and static product for all users. Typically, a user watching television selects from viewing a multiplicity of prescheduled broadcasts. One shortcoming of current TV broadcasts is that there is little control by a user pertaining to how channels are presented. A further disadvantage of current TV broadcasts is that there is no relation between the presentation of channels and a users channel preference.
The term IPTV widely used in this document stand for Internet Protocol Television and is an umbrella term describing television (TV) and video delivered using internet technology instead of normal linear radio frequency (RF) broadcast. An IPTV solution is based on three groups of components as described below. Referring to FIG. 1 an illustrative IPTV architecture 10 includes a triple play environment is one in which a plurality of services is provided to a user over an Internet Protocol (IP) transmission medium or IP network or backbone 14. The plurality of services provided to an end user 18 over such a service includes, but are not limited to, TV live, Video, Video on demand (VOD), mail, games, voice over IP (VoIP), notification, chat, video conferencing, etc. The end user 18 may have a personal computer (PC) 19b, a set-top box 19c for a TV set 19e in their home 19d, all connected to a modem 19a for accessing the IP backbone 14 such as the Internet.
The head end component 22 includes a content provider and specific equipment needed to transmit and receive the digital assets (for example, satellite receiver 24, and encoders 26). Such equipment ensures the transport of digital assets onto the IP network 14. The head end component 22 provides a platform for the live content available and can also manage the dynamic information sent by a broadcaster 32 for an EPG (Electronic Programming Guide). Thus, the broadcaster 32 is the main link between the head end component 22 and a middleware component 42.
The middleware component 42 includes infrastructure ensuring the delivery of the digital assets to the end users, including, for example, IP network infrastructure, portal servers, data storage, and video on demand servers. The customer premises as the end user may include equipment or components installed at a user's home for consuming of the digital assets by the end users. Such devices are heterogeneous as the list of services provided to the user are numerous, and may include, for example, phones, personal digital assistant (PDA), set-top boxes, personal computers (PCs), digital subscriber line (DSL) modems, and/or wireless access point.
The IPTV architecture 10 shown in FIG. 1 provides every viewer with a personal relationship with a broadcaster through a transactional request/response mechanism, rather than picking up a broadcast sent to everyone. IPTV networks generally are based on one of two models, a closed model using a private IP network (local area network (LAN) or DSL, for example, cable TV), and an open model, using the public internet. Typically, when a user subscribes to an IPTV offer they receive a modem and a box which sits on or near the TV 19e, or a set-top box 19c. The IPTV service provides, for example, mail, liveTV, a program guide, personal video recording and video on demand provided by the service provider (for example, Verizon™, Telefonica®, France Telecom®). Live TV channels in an IPTV environment are transmitted to consumer set-top boxes 19c using IP multicasting technology. Each channel uses a different multicast group and the internet group management protocol (IGMP) protocol is used to leave or join a given group based on the TV channel selected.
IP multicast provides a method for one-to-many delivery of information packets (i.e., formatted block of data). Unicast is sending information packets to a single destination. Comparatively, broadcasting refers to transmitting a packet that will be received by every device on a network, limited to a broadcast domain. To achieve one-to-many delivery using IP unicast traffic, each information packet or datagram (i.e., from a service which does not notify the user if delivery fails) is sent to all nodes in a group, and thus is sent multiple times. Thus, a single datagram is sent, but all nodes process it, even those that are not interested. Broadcast delivery service is unsuitable for internetworks, as routers are designed to prevent the spread of broadcast traffic. With IP multicast, a single datagram is sent and forwarded across routers only to the network segments containing nodes that are interested in receiving it.
IP multicast traffic may be used for audio and video teleconferencing, distance learning, and data transfer to a large number of hosts. Mosaic displayed channels are specific TV channels gathered into a matrix, or mosaic display, of X by Z thumbnails of live channels available on the network on a single video channel. A user may then navigate through each thumbnail in the mosaic display to select a channel for viewing. The specific channels are encoded at the head end part of the IPTV infrastructure using dedicated hardware components mixing X by Z channels into a single video stream with X by Z audio channels. On existing digital video broadcasting (DVB) distribution channels (DVB-T, DVB-S, etc. . . . ) all the channels presented in the mosaic are statics, that is, the list of channels per mosaic are based on the head end configuration. The mosaic may be built by the head end component 22 which collects all the TV channels. The head end component 22 reencodes the channels in one stream with a smaller format. Thus, the user typically enters a selection provided on the TV screen allowing scrolling through pages of mosaic TV channels and allows a selection of a channel. One disadvantage of a static mosaic is that the user does not have control of the mosaic and/or is unable to selectively change the mosaic. Another disadvantage of the static mosaic is the cumbersome manner that a user has to scroll though many pages of channel. Further, the channel description must include textual description as the image may not adequately indicate the channel content.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a method, and system implementing said method, for providing a TV display which reflects the user's preferences. It would further be desirable for the display to dynamically reflect the user's preferences in TV viewing.